Her father faced the diagnosis with stoicism: \u201cThey said, \u2018You got cancer. If you came in later, you would have been dead.\u2019 See? That\u2019s my life. I think the universe is taking care of me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Melania recalled a moment three years ago when, in the middle of the night, she called her dad, hysterical: \u201cI called you and said, \u2018I think I\u2019m dying.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Her dad was at her front door 15 minutes later. \u201cHe gave me, what I think of ever since I was a little girl, a \u2018daddy bear hug,\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018This is going to be a blip in your life. You\u2019re going to get through this, and it\u2019ll be a memory.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The two relied on each other as they both underwent treatment. <\/p>\n
When Melanie shared concerns about the high cost of cancer treatment, Shatner said to her: \u201cI do not want you to worry. Just send me the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year later, she said he made her \u201claugh so hard\u201d as she was still going to medical appointments and he told her: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to get well. We\u2019re going to be in the poorhouse!\u201d<\/p>\n
Shatner, who is 95, is father to Melania, 61, Leslie, 67, and Lisabeth, 65, with their late mum, actress Gloria Rand, who died in 2017.<\/p>\n
He credits his close family bonds, as well as outstanding medical treatment, as a key factor in their recoveries. \u201cWe\u2019re a very together family,\u201d he said in the interview. \u201cWe\u2019re bonded by all kinds of difficulties that we\u2019ve overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
They credit their medical teams with now both being cancer-free: \u201cWe got the perfect doctors for her cancer and my cancer,\u201d the actor said.<\/p>\n
They both said their cancer journeys have given them a renewed outlook on life and a new appreciation for what truly matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thinking of the miracle of a hummingbird, and of my dog taking a ball, and my children,\u201d Shatner said. \u201cI\u2019m aware of the magic of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two will launch a new podcast on July 29, titled No Time but Now, interviewing health experts and fellow cancer survivors about their journeys with the disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her father faced the diagnosis with stoicism: \u201cThey said, \u2018You got cancer. If you came in later, you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3376,95,3246,13312,2534,430,14032,797,29139,156,265445,305,25020,111,139,69,19764,21501,12860,4514,265444,5433,1361,8229,2044,3608,10744,102],"class_list":["post-539247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-actor","tag-and","tag-both","tag-canadian","tag-cancer","tag-celebrities","tag-daughter","tag-diagnosed","tag-diagnoses","tag-entertainment","tag-gretsch","tag-have","tag-melanie","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-received","tag-reveal","tag-revealed","tag-same","tag-shatner","tag-stage","tag-that","tag-they","tag-time","tag-were","tag-william","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}